Media Advisory: International Education Conference Addresses Post-9/11 Concerns
Globalization and the terrorist attacks highlight the need for American students to study language and acquire "international expertise"
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Leaders in international education will gather at Duke University this week for a three-day conference focusing on the challenges to American higher education after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Global Challenges and U.S. Higher Education conference, to be held Jan. 23-25, is open to the media, but not to the general public. Representatives from 28 national organizations and colleges and universities across the country will discuss the future of language education, area studies and international education. The conference is held in advance of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
U.S. Undersecretary of Education Eugene Hickock will give the opening address at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at the Millennium Hotel, 2800 Campus Walk Ave., Durham.
"What this conference does is to provide an occasion for the international education community of the United States to deliberate," said Gilbert Merkx, Duke's vice provost for international affairs. "It's really about national needs and how well they are being met."
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks focused new attention on the need for Americans to learn more about other languages and cultures, much the way Sputnik did in 1957. In addition, organizers say, increasing globalization makes it necessary for American students to develop higher levels of "international expertise" in order for the nation to remain competitive.
Presenters will examine a broad set of issues facing international education, including:
-- Addressing critical shortages in language and cultural studies at all levels. Foreign language enrollment in U.S. higher education, for example, has fallen from 16 percent of total enrollments in 1960 to 8 percent today.
-- Improving instruction in less commonly taught languages, such as Pashto and Farsi, which are spoken by millions of people but studied only by a few hundred U.S. students. This shortage was brought to public attention after the Sept. 11 attacks when the FBI issued a public appeal for people fluent in Arabic, Farsi and Pashto.
-- Improving international and foreign language education on the K-12 level.
-- Increasing the number of minorities, who are underrepresented in all aspects of international education.
In addition to Hickock, the featured speakers are: Bobby Inman, retired admiral, Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy at the University of Texas-Austin and former director of the National Security Agency; David Ward, president of the American Council on Education; G. Richard Wagoner president & CEO of General Motors Corp.; and Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane.
The conference is sponsored by the Coalition for International Education, and hosted by the Duke Center for International Studies with support from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. For a complete list of speakers, locations and a schedule, click here.
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Gilbert Merkx, Duke's vice provost for international affairs, can be reached for further comment at (919) 684-5830; Miriam Kazanjian at the Coalition for International Education can be reached at (301) 230-9214 or makazanjian@earthlink.net
